Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

To stay online without a paywall or a lot of pop-up ads, Shorpy needs your help. (Our server rental alone is $3,000 a year.) You can contribute by becoming a Patron, or by purchasing a print from the Shorpy Archive. Or both! Read more about our 2019 pledge drive here. Our last word on the subject is: Thanks!

I had a Beaulieu Super-8 camera with a moving mirror for true thru-the-lens viewfinder, but the exposure time was only 25% of a frame, losing a precious F-stop of speed. The F1.8 Angenieux lens was water-clear, but I ended up getting a Canon with regular beamsplitter viewfinding, normal 50% shutter, and f 1.4 lens, which offered 2 f-stops more low-light, invaluable even after Kodachrome 40 came in.

In 1974 I was graduating from college in San Francisco, one of the few GI Bill students, and I looked much like your brother with cranberry cords and a pseudo-sheep skin jacket over a turtleneck. Color the hair and mustache red, and it's me.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.